Cool Hunting

Hotel Chic and Basic Born, Barcelona
For a holiday spent taking in Barcelona's seamless blend of old and new architecture, food and sounds, the sublime Chic and Basic Hotel couldn't be more well-suited. Located in the trendy Born area, it's an ideal jumping-off spot for wandering the many narrow, meandering streets of the city's neighboring areas. But it's the hotel itself that symbolizes so much of what we consider Barcelona...

Japan Brand Pop Up Shop: Hitoma Portable Tea Room
by Ariston Anderson The Japan Brand Pop Up Shop, currently at NYC's Felissimo through 30 May 2009, is full of the latest fashion accessories, kitchen props and home décor straight from Japan, but what really caught our eye was Hitoma—an enormous portable tea room meant to easily turn any room into the perfect tea or meditation retreat. The project's title, Hitoma, signifies a room used...

Ancient Japan in Milan
If design is in the details, at this year's Milan furniture fair the key shift is away from flawless surfaces and towards Japan's ancient aesthetic of wabi sabi, which rests on the concept that beauty is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. In today's often jejune design world, it's refreshing to see the remnants of the artisan's work, reflecting the randomness of nature instead of what...

Adam Kalkin: Shipping Container Architecture
Would you live in a shipping container? Until firms like Lot-ek, retailers like Freitag and architect Adam Kalkin started turning them into chic examples of creative re-use some years back, most wouldn't consider the question seriously. Kalkin's efforts stand out for drawing on the strengths of sturdy construction while also representing a new level of luxury that comes with an affordable price tag, in...